The Four Words for Home

Winner of the Independent Publishers Bronze Medal in Multicultural Nonfiction. From Afghanistan and Taiwan, the stories of two immigrant families intersect in post-9/11 America. Angie Chuang takes on an assignment to "find the human face of the country we're about to bomb" weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Her five-year journey into the lives of the Shirzai family transports her far beyond journalism. As she is drawn ever deeper into the Shirzais's lives, Chuang confronts unknown territory closer to home. Her own immigrant family from Taiwan is falling apart. Mental illness, divorce, and deeply rooted cultural taboos have shattered her family's American Dream. Ultimately, she finds the two families are more similar than she had imagined. It is in journeying far away from her own home that she is drawn back to her roots-and to confront the hard truth and broken places that lie at the heart of so many stories of migration.